Hard to believe. There rises Elvis Costello for years, step by step higher in his ivory tower, becomes more and more artistic and serious, until you think well, you have to wear a tie now to be able to listen to him. And then suddenly this album: “The Boy Named If” (Emi / Universal). It sounds as if the man from the ivory spire fell straight into a fountain of youth and stayed in there for a thorough bath. First song, first note, bäm: louder, snotty, noisy 60s beat, the lyrics to an angry outcry from a 20-year-old at most. Title: “Farewell OK”. And Costello holds the tension over 13 songs, the mood, the ingenuity, the force. All of a sudden he is booming and yelling again, as if the 80s had only started yesterday.
Apparently someone had to deal with the inevitable, with transience, with saying goodbye to old times in order to find your way back to the drive of those old times. Costello calls the new songs “snapshots that deal with the last days of being young and the humiliating moment when you are told not to act like a child anymore”. But for everyone who still likes things a little more grown up, he has a treat: The album is also available as a classy CD-book combination with 13 short stories by him. One for each song. You can read with a tie.
Tahliah Barnett, known as FKA twigs, likes ambiguity. The music of the English singer moves very freely in the wide field between electronics and experiment. And when she releases a collection of new songs, she doesn’t just call them “album”, but “Mixtape” (Warner Music). You might think it’s a bit of an effort, but there’s something to it: On “Caprisongs” you can find a lot that was created as a duet, with colleagues like The Weeknd, Jorja Smith and Daniel Caesar. Barnett says the album, sorry, mixtape is “my journey back to myself through my collaborators and friends”. The smooth R’n’B songs with the catchy choruses will again ensure good click rates, but the angular pieces are more exciting as every time, in which everything remains strangely fragmented, for example in the great “Honda” with its broken beats and church choirs . And what you absolutely have to give FKW twigs credit for: Even if a song screams for a party in approach and attitude, there is always a touch of melancholy with it, of could-be-over-soon. And what would fit better in the present out there?
If this weren’t a pop column, but an animal column, then it would be time for a hymn to the Australian wombats. Insane animals! Visually a mixture of giant hamster, mini bear and seal, sympathetic round with short legs, a bit bustling, but cozy. To put it in an old-fashioned word – cute. And best of all, wombats produce cube-shaped droppings. No joke. What other animal can do this? But well, this is supposed to be about pop music, and with it Schwenk zu The wombats from Liverpool: The trio has been playing in the British midfield for years with their good-humored Power Pop, is at all major festivals and is doing a lot right again on the new album “Fix Yourself, Not The World” (Awal / Rough Trade). Good swing, fed by the guitar pop of the 90s, refrains with rich melodies and nice lyrics again and again (very nice the head-up line “I’ll get out of bed / stop listening to Radiohead“). But with all the sympathy: The three of them can’t quite keep up with the real wombats. Less cute, less funny. And cube-shaped … well, let’s leave that.
Speaking of wildlife, something else from Simon Green. The Englishman has been making music under the name for many years Bonobo (Miniature chimpanzee, Pan paniscus, a species of primate in the great ape family). On the previous six albums, these were mostly dreamy ambient walks, a lot of cloudy euphoria, sometimes almost on the verge of a meditation soundtrack, but always tasteful. On the new album “Fragments” (Ninja Tune), Green is now doing something more radio-friendly, with guest singers and a bit of a cocktail mood. That tilts a bit in the direction of soul pop, a shame, but also offers a welcome opportunity to put on “Black Sands” again, the album with which the man defined his own beautiful dream world years ago.